This blog contains all my media, marketing and digital columns written for the Eastern Daily Press newspaper, the biggest selling regional morning newspaper in England. I hope you enjoy.

Tuesday, 7 May 2013

Guinness – a lesson in the changing face of marketing

A couple of weeks ago I attended a
conference in Dublin with many from the Irish newspaper
industry. One of the presentations from an Irish digital marketing agency called
Cybercom who has a range of very well known brands as clients one being that
most Irish of brands Guinness.

Guinness of course is famous for its
advertising and has created some of the most iconic television campaigns over
the last 20 years. From the Snail Race to the Swimmer to the multi-award winning
Surfer, Guinness has made a name for pushing the boundaries of how it markets
its single brand.

Guinness
has constantly had to evolve its advertising and walking round the Storehouse in
Dublin you can
see the history of those campaigns. In the 1930’s when the print ads were the
classic “My Goodness, My Guinness”, advertising was simply telling individuals
what a product was, why you should buy it and where you can get it from.

Those
fundamentals have not changed but Guinness believes that successful brands are
now marketing with people rather than to people. Brands must realise that people
are more than consumers who purchase their goods and that they are now using and
creating content, rating reviews, having multiple interest streams and are
members of different communities. In doing so brands and companies must not
interrupt people from what they are interested in, but somehow become what
people are interested in.

Of
course that is not easy in any way shape or form and is a lot easier if you are
a well loved beer than, for example, a maker of screws. However the principle of
moving from thinking about consumers just as people who buy stuff, to thinking
about consumers as individual human beings, is a big mindset change for
many.

Guinness also believe that
companies now have to
accept that consumers have changed and want to interact with each other and
brands on 4 different types of screens. Also digital is the new operating system
of the world and a modern marketers job is to understand the technology and how
these channels are used to communicate with each other and
brands.

To
react to that Guinness has invested heavily in digital advertising and social
media. Working with Cybercom they created “Insights
from Inside the Ireland Camp” which is a Guinness rugby supporters Ireland
community to which players delivered regular updates and value adding content.
This content was then shared across multiple distribution channels including
guinness.com, an iPhone app, YouTube, Twitter and Facebook.

Cybercom, through its work with
Guinness and others, have found that you may be able
to speak to someone via Twitter but they are also influenced by people in other
environments such as Facebook and even print and that conversation is now in a
constant state of flux.
Your brand
should be part of the conversation but you cannot force your way into the
conversation which means that you have to spend time to understand what drives
and motivates your
consumers.

Conferences
are very good at giving you time to think and learn from others. In this case it
is clear that it helps if you are company as big as Guinness with its large
marketing budget. However many of the lessons that Guinness has learnt, not just
in recent years, but across 9 decades of pushing the marketing envelope are
applicable to all.

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About Me

My name is Tim Youngman, I am director of marketing for a regional newspaper group in the UK.
This blog contains the columns I write on media, marketing and technology for the Eastern Daily Press newspaper in the UK www.edp24.co.uk England's largest selling regional morning newspaper.
You can find our more about me here:
www.linkedin.com/in/timyoungman
and follow me on twitter @timyoungman